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Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

1988

Review of Helen Hunt Jackson

Valerie Sherer Mathes City College of

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Mathes, Valerie Sherer, "Review of Helen Hunt Jackson" (1988). Great Plains Quarterly. 378. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/378

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 124 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1988

Helen Hunt Jackson. By Rosemary Whitaker. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University West­ ern Writers Series, 1987. Selected bibliogra­ phy. 50 pp. $2.95.

Helen Hunt Jackson, considered by Emer­ son "the greatest American woman poet," was author of more that thirty books and numer­ ous newspaper pieces and articles. Virtually forgotten today, she is ironically the subject of two short biographies written last year, al­ though neither eclipses the one written in 1939 by Ruth Odell. Rosemary Whitaker describes Jackson as a writer interested in helping readers live more satisfactory lives. Her plots are romantic; and her heroines are strong, self-reliant women, much like Jackson, who supported herself by writing. Literally "possessed" by the plight of the American Indian, Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor, condemning the government's Indi­ an Policy; a report on the plight of the Mission Indian in California; and a novel, , which has been reprinted more than three hundred times. Whitaker believes that Ramona did not generate the same enthusiasm as Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was its intention, because Jackson was writing woman's fiction while was not. Although based solely on secondary sources, this pamphlet accomplishes its prima­ ry purpose. Part of a western writers series, including biographies of Mary Hallock Foote, Wallace Stegner, and Bret Harte, it places Jackson among the illustrious company that she so well deserves. VALERIE SHERER MATHES Department of Social Science City College of San Francisco